Grotiana 35 (2014) 119-157 GROTIAN A brill.com/grot
Beyond Minimalism Didactic Secularisation in De Veritate
Mark Somos Research Fellow, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Affiliate Scholar, The Tobin Project; Senior Visiting Research Fellow, Sussex Law School [email protected]
Abstract
This paper offers an interpretation of De veritate that resolves its ostensible self- contradictions and uncovers its coherence when it is read as a text designed primarily with an irenic purpose, a didactic method, and having a secularising effect regardless of the author’s intention. The article has seven sections: (1) Introduction; (2) Proofs of Religious Truth (Standards of good religion: ethics, rewards, and the violence of conquest; Testimony and consensus; Miracles; Oracles and prophecies; Simplicity); (3) Religious Practice (Ceremonies and rites; Sacrifices; Adiaphora); (4) Distinctive Christian Truths (The Trinity; Jesus Christ; Son of God, Son of Man; Death, Resurrection, and Ascension; Free will; Immortality; Doctrinal omissions); (5) Proofs from Providential History (The Bible’s textual integrity; The spread of Christianity; The early Church and the Bible), (6) Aspects of Reception; and (7) Conclusion: Christianity according to De veritate (Summary of findings; Thesis 1: Secularising legalism; Thesis 2: Didactic secularisation).
Keywords
De veritate – secularisation – law and religion – minimalism – rhetoric of irenicism
* Research for this paper began in Berlin, Germany and ended in San Marino ca, usa. Many thanks to the program Rechtskulturen: Confrontations beyond Comparison, an initiative of the Berlin Research Network Recht im Kontext (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin) at the Forum Transregionale Studien, and to the Sacred and Secular Revolutions program of The Huntington Library and the Jack Miller Center, for generous support. The author is grateful to Hans Blom, Ioannis Evrigenis, Marketa Klicova and Dániel Margócsy for their comments on various drafts.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/18760759-03501004
ach Heer – het is te Loevestein gemaakt. ∵
Introduction
Readers of De veritate seldom miss one or more oddities and apparent self- contradictions in Grotius’s arguments for the truth of Christianity. As shown in this volume, the contemporary reception and eighteenth-century afterlife of De veritate was remarkably contentious. Among recent readers, Heering and Klein point out the absence of Creation and the Trinity from the list of Christian doctrines to be proved, in contrast, for instance, with Mornay’s De veritate or Grotius’s own Meletius.1 Günther Lottes describes Grotius’s arguments as ‘gar- bled,’ ‘verging on the ridiculous,’ and unwittingly weakening his own argu- ments.2 Here, it is the ‘unwittingly’ part of this acute assessment that I wish to dispute. A systematic survey of the positive doctrinal content of Christianity that Grotius offers suggests that these oddities and self-contradictions are neither isolated, nor accidental. Instead of reducing Christianity to minimal tenets accessible to all reasonable men, including Jews, Muslims, and polytheists, Grotius subverts the reasonability of every core Christian doctrine. A possible explanation is that De veritate was designed to gradually lead readers away from an expectation of reasonable proofs to sola fide in a minimal set of Christian doctrines, to which standards of human reason cannot apply. This rhetorical strategy, and the legal genre of the work, are two reasons why De veritate does not readily fit into the mainstream of Christian apologetics, and exerts an ultimately secularising effect.
1 J.P. Heering, Hugo Grotius as Apologist for the Christian Religion: A Study of His Work De veri- tate religionis christianae (1640) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 102–3. Dietrich Klein, ‘Hugo Grotius’s Position on Islam as Described in De veritate religionis Christianae, Liber vi,’ in ed. by Martin Mulsow and Jan Rohls, Socinianism and Arminianism: Antitrinitarians, Calvinists and Cultural Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 149–73, at p. 159. 2 See G. Lottes, ‘The Transformation of Apologetical Literature in the Early Enlightenment’, infra.
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In the next four sections I will outline the ways in which Grotius imple- ments this strategy in De veritate by examining what he regards as proofs of religious truth, how religious practice is evaluated, how to settle contentious dogmatic issues, and how to reconcile Providence with politics and free will. A shorter section on the insights we can glean from De veritate’s reception pre- cedes the conclusion, where several explanations for Grotius’s strategy are explored.
Proofs of Religious Truth
Standards of Good Religion: Ethics, Rewards, and the Violence of Conquest Grotius posits two criteria for a good religion: ethical rules for life, and the promise of reward.3 Christianity, unlike paganism or Judaism, meets both con- ditions, and adds to them the persuasive power of miracles.4 Turning moral goodness into a pre-religion standard against which Judaism, Islam, paganism and Christianity can be measured, and choosing individual reward as the other criterion, already carry secularising implications. Gone for now is the idea that human nature, reason, the love of God, God’s free gift, or a combination of these, constitute the necessary and sufficient cause of true faith, and that the self-serving expectation of rewards is dispensable.
3 Grotius, De veritate religionis christianae (2nd ed., Leiden, 1629), iv.149–50, translated in Symon Patrick, The truth of Christian Religion: In Six Books Written in Latin by Hugo Grotius… (London, 1689), IV.ix.120. Unless indicated otherwise, references are to the 1629 second edi- tion, followed by the corresponding page numbers in this English translation. On Patrick, see J. van den Berg, ‘Between Platonism and Enlightenment. Simon Patrick (1625–1707) and his Place in the Latitudinarian Movement,’ in: J. van den Berg, Religious Currents and Cross- Currents: Essays on Early Modern Protestantism and the Protestant Enlightenment, ed. by J. de Bruijn, P. Holtrop, E. van der Wall (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 133–48. Note that in the 1629 ed., iv.139, Grotius states that prayers to evil spirits are useless, because their worshippers cannot be certain that the evil spirits will deliver. This strikingly mercenary account of reli- gion makes no reference to the comparative morality of Christianity and that of evil spirit- worship; only to rewards. Other editions are referenced when the reader may benefit from tracing the connection between a different edition and political or intellectual events (such as Counter-Remonstrant criticisms, or the presence or absence of an argument in the 1627 first edition) or in the case of relevant textual changes, including Grotius’s own revisions, commentaries and annota- tions by editors, such as Jean Leclerc (1657–1736), and similar edition-specific features. 4 1629 ed., v.196, mispaginated as 146, V.xviii.157; and 1689 tr., v.211–2, v.xxiii.168.
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If my main thesis is true, and this shift of emphasis to self-interest serves an overarching didactic purpose, Grotius’s choices still remain striking. Among the well-established apologetic traditions one he discards is that miracles have ceased with Christ precisely because for true believers faith must outweigh the attraction of rewards. An alternative onus probandi in early modern Protestant theology invoked both ot and nt language on the circumcision of the heart, and the laws written in man’s conscience. On the rare occasion when Grotius does invoke this standard of proof in De veritate, his legal analogy is to a king who replaces sundry laws with a common legal system for the sake of uniform government.5 Even here, Grotius interprets the law written in men’s minds, according i.a. to Jer. 31:31, as a positive divine law, not a natural law discoverable by all.6 The law written in all hearts serves in De veritate not as a proof of Christianity, but as a doctrine dependent on demonstrating the truth of Christianity by other means. Pacifism or bellicosity is an important litmus test of a religion’s ethical value. Islam, ancient Greece and Rome are found wanting,7 allowing Grotius to pres- ent pacifism – as well as monogamy – among the exclusive proofs of the truth of Christianity.8 The section on the spread of Christianity below will show how Grotius comprehensively subverts this claim by building a contradictory pic- ture of the worldly triumph of Christianity that closely follows his repeated condemnations of Islam for the violence of its expansion, proving its untruth as a religion.9 In sum, even if boiling the truth of Christianity down to ethics and reward was unproblematic, De veritate would still need not only close analysis, but also radical re-evaluation.
Testimony and Consensus Grotius subscribed to the Aristotelian distinction between different types of evidence, and the necessity of matching them to the subject matter. Ethics may not be susceptible to the same type of proof as geometry – although uni- versal consensus on an ethical subject, should it ever occur, may come close to
5 See also 1629 ed., v.168, or V.vii.310 in the 1675 Amsterdam edition: in creating universally binding laws Christ abrogated Mosaic laws, which applied only to Jews, the same way a king abolishes municipal statutes. Borrowing later from Tacitus, Grotius uses the same analogy to explain epistemic humility: just as it is perilous to inquire into kings’ counsel, so it is unwise to conjecture into God’s meaning. 1675 ed., III.xii.221–2. 6 1629 ed., v.170–1; 1689 tr., V.vii.137–8. See also Jesus acquiring regal potestas, including the authority to make law: 1629 ed., V.167; 1675 ed., V.vii.308; 1689 tr., V.vii.135. 7 1689 tr., II.xiv. 8 1689 tr., II.xv. 9 Later restatements of Islam’s violence are at the beginning of Book VI, and also VI.vii.
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10 See i.a. 1629 ed., 96–99. Also Ioannis Evrigenis, Images of Anarchy: The Rhetoric and Science in Hobbes’s State of Nature (Cambridge: cup, 2014). 11 See Henk Nellen, ‘Minimal Religion, Deism and Socinianism: On Grotius’s Motives for Writing De Veritate,’ Grotiana 33 (2012), 25–57, at pp. 37, 57, for an excellent discussion of probability and De veritate. My point, on Grotius’s use of probability specifically in legal reasoning in De veritate, is complementary, and does not detract from the validity of the intellectual lineage that Nellen traces through Mersenne, Cherbury and beyond. 12 Passages are too numerous to list, but see e.g. De veritate, II.v for the steps of Grotius’s method and the weight of authority he assigns. II.vii: Christ’s resurrection would not be believed by anyone, had it not been for eye-witnesses and ocular testimony. This leaves little room, for instance, for proving the truth of Christianity from the gift of faith, or from a combination of ot prophecies about the Messiah’s resurrection with signs from the life of Jesus suggesting that he is Christ. Not in the 1629, but later editions of De veritate, Book III verifies Christian miracles performed at sepulchres by referring to Porphyry as a hostile witness. III.vii.213 in the 1675 ed. Also see V.xxii (1627 ed. v.182; 1689 tr. v.167). Islam is refuted because the miracles reported in the Bible are attested by better witnesses than the miracles of Mohammed; therefore the Bible is a better source of Law. 1627 ed., vi.191; 1689 tr., VI.v.176. 13 See esp. De veritate, I.xv. There is an interesting discussion in Book III, where Grotius explains that eye-witnesses to biblical events have the same authority as the wit nesses that Tacitus, Suetonius, and other historians relied on. 1629 ed., III.106. On the
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Grotius also recognises consensus as a source of authority. Astrology’s groundlessness is demonstrated by the absence of consensus regarding any of its claims.14 Grotius’s comparison of the credibility of the Muslim with the Christian claim to an uncorrupted divine text concludes with the extraordi- nary thought that had there been no reports of the sayings and teachings of Jesus and Mohammed, equity would have dictated that the consensus of their followers determine the doctrinal content of their respective religions.15 The historical context of De veritate is of paramount importance in under- standing Grotius’s seemingly self-contradictory claims concerning the exis- tence and absence of a broad or universal consensus among Christians on the essence of their faith. The range of vehement and high-visibility debates sur- rounding biblical exegeses germane to however minimalist a notion of Christianity one entertained, and the absence of consensus among Christians about the biblical text and its meaning, were particularly striking in the decades when De veritate was written, and rewritten. The textual evidence for the doctrines of individual salvation, the nature of Jesus, and the status of rituals, practices and church hierarchy, was fiercely contested not only among theologians but throughout society, from the highest ranks of church, cities, and state, to millenarian settlements and movements sweeping the countryside. In Grotius’s framework for comparing testimony, textual integrity and con- sent as sources of authority for religious truth, and with the inadequate or counterproductive evidence he chose to present, the doctrinal content of Christianity is radically challenged, or at the least fails to emerge as evidently more compelling than Judaism or Islam.16 Although I think this would go too far, one could nevertheless cogently sustain the interpretation that the radical doctrinal disagreement among Christians that constitutes the immediate his- torical context in which De veritate was written appears in Grotius’s critique of astrology (III.xiv, IV.v and xi), and the choice of his evidence and the fea- tures of his comparative framework reveal a similarly profound epistemic
secularising effects of historicising exegesis see Somos, Secularisation and the Leiden Circle (Leiden: Brill, 2011), ch. II, and pp. 414–6 for cases in Grotius’s De iure praedae. 14 1629 ed., IV.151–2 (ending ‘…ut nihil in ea certi reperiatur, præter hoc ipsum, certi esse nihil.’); 1689 tr., IV.xi.122. 15 1629 ed., VI.220; 1689 tr., VI.iii.174. 16 For instance, Grotius praises the credibility of the ot Jewish authors in the same terms as the nt authors’ (e.g. 1629 ed., III.127–8), with the one difference that he does not attribute simplicity and lack of learning to ot authors. Likewise, the argument for the nt’s textual integrity, treated below, is restated for the ot on III.129–30 of the 1629 ed.
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Miracles Grotius’s unusual treatment of miracles as the ultimate proof of a reli- gion’s truth is suspect for at least seven reasons.17 Firstly, it contravenes all the traditions that emphasise faith instead, including those that build the distinc- tion between the Jews and the Christians on the latter’s comparative and meri- torious dependence on faith, after miracles had ceased with Christ. Further, the insistence that miracles are the effective way of convincing man of reli- gious truth de-prioritises time-honoured philosophical arguments for the exis- tence of God, such as the ontological argument, the argument from design, or the appeal to the universality of conscience. The stated intention of De veritate is to convince reasonable men of the truth of Christianity. Prioritising miracles over philosophy is not an obviously advantageous method to achieve this. The second warning sign about Grotius’s intention is that he praises mira- cles often in Book v, addressed to the Jews. Out of his four target audiences (Christians, Jews, Muslims, and pagans), Grotius chooses the Jews, the only group whose canonical miracles Christians also believe in. All ot miracles, like the burning bush, the signs to convince pharaoh to let the Jews leave Egypt, and so on, are parts of both the Jewish and the Christian religions. If divine miracles are to be used at all in Christian apologetics, then distinguishing between four audiences and addressing the Jews in particular with the argu- ment for the superiority of Christian miracles, including those in the ot, is an unpromising way to proceed, with a high risk of becoming counterproductive to the alleged demonstration.18 The undue dependence on the Jewish tradition brings us to the logic of Grotius’s argument. In this volume, Lottes points out the oddity and unusual- ness of Grotius’s ‘reverse argument’ concerning miracles. This argument takes the following form: there exists a tradition reporting miracles; the tradition was started and perpetuated by trustworthy eye-witnesses and reasonable men; therefore the miracles must be true. In addition to the logical weakness
17 1629 ed., v.160 (‘Neque enim potest Deus dogmati per hominem promulgato auctoritatem efficacius conciliare, quam miraculis editis.’); 1689 tr., V.ii.129. That Grotius’s reliance on miracles is highly unusual has been noticed i.a. by Heering, Grotius, pp. 90, 105. No compa- rable emphasis can be found in Mornay or Meletius. Calvin regards miracles as unimport- ant, because they belong to a chapter in providential history that was closed by Christ. 18 Grotius’s concluding summary of Book v restates the emphasis on the miracles of Christianity, which should convince the Jews. 1629 ed., v.211–2; 1689 tr., V.xxiii.168.
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19 The weight put on the Jewish connection to prove Christianity is also brought out by the contrast with Grotius’s treatment of Islamic miracles. De veritate, VI.v: Islam is refuted because the miracles reported in the Bible are attested by better witnesses than the miracles of Mohammed; therefore the Bible is a better source of Law. 1627 ed., VI.191; 1689 tr. VI.v.176. 20 Heering, Grotius, p. 106. 21 The Kuzari principle is described i.a. in De veritate, I.xiii, I.xvi, V.ii, and used in I.xv (where the historicity of Moses proves the truth of miracles); II.ii, II.vii for Christ’s resurrection, where the act of appealing to witnesses itself is also considered a sign of veracity, etc. For more details and other texts using this principle see Somos, Secularisation, pp. 348–9. For praises of Maimonides’ Guide from 1605 onward by members of the Leiden Circle see J.P. Rosenblatt, Renaissance England’s Chief Rabbi (Oxford: OUP, 2006), pp. 79–80. 22 1629 ed., IV.145. ‘Sunt & alia, quæ admirationem tantum sui conciverunt apud ignaros rerum naturalium, præcipue occultarum proprietatum; quale quid accideret, si quis apud populos ejus rei ignaros magnete ferrum duceret […]’ 1689 tr., IV.viii.117. 23 Justin Champion, ‘”Socinianism Truly stated”: John Toland, Jean Leclerc and the Eighteenth-Century Reception of Grotius’s De veritate,’ Grotiana 33 (2012), 119–43. 24 This is repeated as the premise of the section, Malos spiritus adoratos à paganis probatur, & ostenditur quā id sit indignum, 135–9 in the 1629 ed., Book IV.
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Grotius’s next step is to classify God’s complicity in real pagan miracles, and God’s independent performance of miracles that do not reveal but con- ceal the truth of Christianity, as deceit of the same kind. This may be justified legally as divine forms of punishment for treason; but it sits uneasily with most possible formulations of the doctrines of divine beneficence, grace, and providence.
Neither need any Man wonder why God suffered some marvels to be wrought by evil Spirits among the Gentiles, seeing they deserved to be cheated with such illusions, who so long time had forsaken the worship of the true God.25
The alternative explanation of biblical reports of non-divine miracles, namely that God allowed pagans and evil spirits to directly perform miracles as part of his providential plan to bring impious men like Vespasian to power, and punish the Jews, is more conventional.26 However, this explanation is not only aban- doned in favour of acknowledging pagan miracles as genuine, but also explic- itly denied in De veritate II.vii, where Grotius states that God would not deceive men, particularly not through miracles. In contrast with his treatment of miracles performed for pagans by evil spir- its, Grotius challenges both the truth content and validity of Mohammed’s miracles, because they do not conform to the universal ethical norms against which, as all reasonable men must agree, the verity of compared religions must be measured. Jesus’ miracles, according to Grotius, were humane and appeal- ing to those who care about this-worldly rewards. Mohammed’s were frivolous and magician-like, starting with the case of the dove that flew to his ear.27 The parallel with Noah’s dove in Genesis 8 is hard to escape.
25 1689 tr., IV.viii.118; 1629. ed, IV.146–7: ‘Neque est, quod miretur quisquam, passum esse summum Deum, ut mira quædam à pravis Spiritibus ederentur, cum deludi talibus præs- tigijs meriti essent, qui à veri Dei cultu pridem defecerant.’ The pagan miracles’ breach of human laws is in the preceding sentence. In the same context, Grotius describes the pagan attribution of miracles to humans and to natural phenomena as the legal crimes of high treason and rebellion against God on IV.138 and 140 of the 1629 ed. 26 1689 tr., IV.viii.118. 27 1629 ed., VI.221, 1689 tr., VI.v.175. It is unclear where Grotius got this. One possibility is that he took Scaliger’s note on Manilius, and adapted it to make this incredible story sound similar to Noah’s, creating a parallel where none existed, for the purpose of didactic secularisation described here. G.J. Toomer, ‘Edward Pococke’s Arabic Translations of Grotius, De veritate,’ Grotiana 33 (2012), 88–105, at pp. 92–3, 100. The link between the miracles of Noah and Mohammed would have also been readily suggested by the Doctrina Machumet. Klein, ‘Hugo Grotius’s Position,’ p. 162. Toomer, ‘Edward Pococke’s Arabic
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Note that unlike many contemporary Christians and Hobbes, in De veritate Grotius does not hold that miracles have ceased with Christ. De veritate, I.xvii, for instance, is an answer to those who wonder why miracles are not seen now. Given the preponderance of the general early modern Christian position – in Catholic, Calvinist and other varieties – that miracles have ceased with Christ, and consequently faith has become an even more important duty and gift, it is surprising to see Grotius avoid this position altogether, and argue (somewhat unconvincingly) that God can still work miracles, but simply has not found it necessary lately. Seemingly antithetically to De veritate’s stated aim, this also allows Grotius to accept Mohammed’s and other miracles, reported after Christ’s incarnation and ascension, as genuine. In sum, the fifth reason to ques- tion Grotius’s prima facie claim to present miracles as evidence for Christianity is the unfavourable light cast on the Christian acceptance of miracles when they are compared with similar Islamic ones, which Grotius dismisses, and with genuine pagan miracles, performed by evil spirits and permitted by God in deceit. Sixthly, Grotius posits an obviously non-existent consensus around Christian miracles. In Book III, he elaborates several salient arguments about miracles as evidence of the truth of Christianity. One is that non-Christians have per- formed miracles, a point already discussed above. Another is that no one has doubted that Peter and other apostles worked miracles.28 This is not true, as he and his readers knew. As discussed below, Grotius uses the same technique, namely to appeal to an obviously non-existing consensus, with regard to the textual integrity of the Bible, the credibility of the Apostles and first Christians as witnesses, and contemporary agreement about Christianity’s core tenets. The seventh reason to rethink the doctrinal vs. didactic value of Christian miracles that emerges from De veritate is that despite the clear and repeated emphasis on their status as one of the two proofs of Christianity (rewards and punishment being the other), neither the observation of natural miracles nor
Translations,’ p. 103. To avoid alienating the Muslim audience, Pococke removed this pas- sage in his translation of De veritate. Johann Christoph Koecher, a keen student of De veri- tate and annotator of Leclerc’s edition, also found the business of Mohammed’s dove odd. See VI.v.297 in the 1807 Oxford edition of De veritate, which does not clearly distinguish Koecher’s and Leclerc’s annotations (but cf. the 1734 Hague issue of Leclerc’s edition with- out Koecher’s notes, where the note on doves is missing on VI.v.295–6). On Leclerc and Koecher see J.J.V.M. de Vet, ‘Jean Leclerc, an Enlightened Propagandist of Grotius’ “De veritate religionis christianae”’, Nederlands archief voor kerkgeschiedenis 64 (1984), 160–95, at pp. 164 and 195. 28 1629 ed., III.109–10.
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Oracles and Prophecies Grotius’s refutation of pagan oracles is interesting. As in the case of miracles, he does not dispute that some oracles worked, and gives several reasons why. Firstly, some were ambiguously worded. Secondly, based on natural causes and probability, physicians and those learned in politics can make predictions that seem supernatural to non-specialists. Thirdly, God can use pagan mouthpieces, like Virgil or the Sybils, to prefigure truths of Christianity, without thereby approving paganism.29 One reason why this is problematic for the truth of Christianity is that Grotius uses the same premises to draw a different conclusion regarding Jewish oracles and prophecies. In Book III, 110–1 in the 1629 ed., he sets up an invalid, circular argument to show that these writings must be true, because although obscure at the time of writing, later events retrospectively prove them to have been divinely revealed.30 In addition to expressing a classic fallacy, this point also negates the argument that the lack of objections to the Christian interpre- tation of ot prophecies on the part of Hebrew writers, who also lived before the events that could have retrospectively proved these passages to be divinely inspired, validates these Christian interpretations of ot passages as true prophecies. Whether or not Christian history divides ot figures into Jews who were the true spiritual ancestors of Christians (Noah, David, etc.), and Jews who are merely ancestors of post-biblical Jews, the dilemma remains: either no Jew before Christ objected to these prophecies because they did not know their true meaning; or those who foresaw Christ did not object to the Christian interpretation because they did know their prophecies’ true meaning. It is impossible to maintain both of Grotius’s statements on ot prophecies, namely that lack of objections to ot prophecies’ Christian interpretation indicates understanding, and that ot prophecies are validated by later events, of which the biblical authors and recorders of the prophecies were unaware.
29 1629 ed., IV.148–9; 1689 tr., IV.ix.119. 30 Logical fallacies in De veritate are treated separately in the Conclusion below.
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That Grotius knew that maintaining both statements at the same time was illogical is shown, for instance, in his treatment of pagan oracles, discussed above. The pagans who gave correct oracles and prophecies of future events that proved the truth of Christianity, without the pagans themselves knowing it, were incorrect in their paganistic interpretation. It is the same logic that would invalidate ot prophecies of nt events. Such ot prophecies are indis- pensable to the core points of De veritate. ot prophecies foretold not only Christ’s coming (e.g. 1689 tr., V.xvii) but also the abolition of sacrifices (1689 tr., V.viii.141–2). In Book v, Grotius begins an ingenious series of moves with the introduc- tion that Christ abrogated Mosaic laws in the way a king ends a civil war among his subjects, by declaring new laws that apply across the country, and pardon- ing those who obey.31 Grotius then announces that he will position the aboli- tion of sacrifices, rites, holy days and outward ceremonies at the core of this series of arguments. Aimed ostensibly against the Jews who refuse to recognise Christ and the validity of his abrogation of Mosaic laws, this series serves as a stark reminder of the wars among Christians, as well as of the imperative to create religious peace among and within the United Provinces.32 Moreover, by couching his radical minimalism and deprioritisation of these aspects shared by Judaism and Christianity (rites and rituals, festivals, and so forth) in the framework of his demonstration of Christianity’s superiority, Grotius puts any Christian reader who insists that these sacrifices are essential in the unenvi- able position of seeming to favour the Mosaic laws over Christ’s.33 In this sec- tion Grotius sets up the Jews as a straw dummy, a common enemy to unite all Christians; and at the same time an enemy familiar and familial, one who should be pacified and persuaded, rather than vanquished. Grotius does not sacrifice what we would now call inter-faith irenicism to the success of his cre- ation of a temporary outgroup against which disunited Christians may be reunited. Later, at the start of Book vi, we learn that Christians made the same
31 1627 ed., 146; 1629 ed., v.171; 1675 ed., V.vii.311. 32 The series of radical minimalist arguments thus structured, starting with sacrifices, runs from v.146–159 in the 1627 ed.; 171–85 in the 1629 ed.; V.viii.313–V.xi.334 in the 1675 ed. The series is followed by an account of the Apostles’ policy of toleration. 33 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was a well-established tradition of applying the trope of ‘Judaising seducer’ to both Jesus’s contemporaries who retrospec- tively seem to have veered too easily between Christian and Jewish beliefs, and to one’s own Christian contemporaries who offered a rival biblical interpretation. One way in which Grotius frames minimalism in De veritate is to historicise Christian rituals and group them with Jewish rituals, thereby exposing the non-minimalist to the dangerous accusation of ‘Judaising.’
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34 1627 ed., VI.185; 1689 tr., VI.170.
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Simplicity In De veritate, II.vii and IV.x we find Grotius using the simplicity of the Apostles to prove their honesty. II.v is one of several chapters that presents a curious contradiction to this formulation. Here Grotius presents the Apostles and the early Fathers as intelligent men who did careful due diligence to make sure that the events they reported were well-attested and stood up to several dis- tinct epistemic tests of veracity. The same topic repeats in II.xviii.185–6 of the 1675 edition, but with a differ- ent contradiction. Unlike the Greek moralisers, the early teachers of Christi anity used only the plainest language, bereft of subtlety and, Grotius suggests, perhaps intelligence. The Peripatetics argued from natural history, the Stoics used logic (dialectica subtilitate), the Pythagoreans, mathematics, and Plato, Xenophon and Theophrastus had eloquence. They form the contrast to Grotius’s portrait of the first teachers of Christianity. This is not quite the same as the wise simplicity that was often considered a Christian virtue, and a sign of truth.36 The theme of Christian simplicity as ignorance is repeated in Book iii as an accusation that was levelled against witnesses to Christ’s resurrection.37 It is a back-handed compliment at best when Grotius explains that their enemies did not call into question the witnesses’ piety and way of life; only their learning. Moreover, even this back-handed compliment of their reliability is suspect. The emperor Julian, Lucian and others also objected to Christians’ false piety, as Grotius knew very well. (Elsewhere, Grotius himself asserts that the simplex pie- tas of early Christians was gradually corrupted after Constantine and others began to favour Christianity.)38 But to drive the point about doubtful credibility home, Grotius closes this section by arguing that one sign of the gospels’ credibil- ity is that Peter allowed his triple denial of Christ to be included. In a classic para- dox, Grotius argues that Peter cannot be a liar, because he reports himself as one. In Book v, Grotius develops a version of the Protestant simplicity argument to convince the Jews to accept Jesus. Applying the hermeneutics of simplicity,
35 On Leclerc’s criticism of the Acta Pilati and trial by ordeal in De veritate, see de Vet, ‘Leclerc,’ p. 176. 36 For Cunaeus’s similar move in the 1612 Sardi venales from Erasmus’s Christian folly to plain folly in Christianity, see Somos, Secularisation, pp. 377–8; and 422–6 for an account of the same technique in De iure praedae. 37 1629 ed., III.108. 38 1627 ed., 184; 1689 tr., VI. 169.
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Religious Practice
Ceremonies and Rites According to Grotius, the message of the New Testament is primarily ethical. At best, rites are didactic tools; at worst, they produce idolatry through igno- rance and misunderstanding. The distinction between kosher and unkosher meats, for instance, is a foolish superstition.42 So are festival days, including the Sabbath. (Further, Grotius notes that Sabbath was observed in order to fos- ter civic unity, and due to the pragmatic benefit of having a universal day of rest across the country.)43 Circumcision, the token of a covenant that has been
39 1627 ed., 169; 1689 tr., V.xviii.157. 40 I.a. in Heering, Grotius. 41 1627 ed., VI.187; 1689 tr., VI.ii.172. For a relevant discussion between Mersenne and Ruarus, see Nellen, ‘Minimal,’ p. 51. 42 1689 tr., V.ix.143. 43 1689 tr., V.x.144–6.
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This Religion altogether contrived for the shedding of blood, delights much in Rites and Ceremonies, and would be believed without all liberty of enquiry thereinto…45
The non-tangential, indissoluble link that Grotius created between the truth of Christianity and the radical minimalisation of its rituals and ceremonies is a major reason for the broad and long-term popularity of De veritate.
Sacrifices An obvious reason to consider carefully Grotius’s position on sacrifices is that even friendly and, in this case, unheeded critics like Episcopius and Vossius pointed out that Grotius’s attribution of the institution of sacrifices to man, rather than God, is theologically untenable.46 To undermine the superfluous and harmful doctrine of sacrifices, Grotius describes several cases where the ritual of sacrifice, which has never in itself pleased God, gave rise to supersti- tion.47 His etiology of superstition in Book v repeatedly emphasises a point, illustrated by this passage:
…Sacrifices are not in the number of those things which God desires for themselves or primarily; and that the People (a naughty Superstition creeping in, as is usual, by little and little among them) placed a great part of their Piety in them, and believed they made a sufficient compensation for their sins by Sacrifices: what wonder is it, if God at length take away a thing, which was not now in its own nature indifferent, but whose use was now become a Vice?48
One also wonders whether Grotius is taking a swipe at the Synod of Dordt in this process. Compare Rejectio Errorum § iv in the Canons of Dordt, condemn- ing those
44 1689 tr., X.vi.147–8. 45 1689 tr., VI.ii.171–2. In 1627 ed., 186–7. 46 Heering, Grotius, p. 14. 47 1629 ed., v.175; 1689 tr., V.viii.141. 48 1689 tr., V.viii.141.
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Who teach that what is involved in the new covenant of grace which God the Father made with men through the intervening of Christ’s death is not that we are justified before God and saved through faith, insofar as it accepts Christ’s merit, but rather that God, having withdrawn his demand for perfect obedience to the law, counts faith itself, and the imperfect obedience of faith, as perfect obedience to the law, and graciously looks upon this as worthy of the reward of eternal life. For they contradict Scripture: They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ, whom God presented as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood (Rom. 3:24–25). And along with the ungodly Socinus, they introduce a new and foreign justification of man before God, against the consensus of the whole church.49
The Dordtian view of Christ meets Grotius’s specific standards for misunder- standing and idolising a sacrifice quite well, just like his own view, as many have noticed, is remarkably close to the Socinian notion of Christ that is criti- cised here. Elsewhere, Grotius reminds his readers that prophecies have fore- told the abolition of sacrifices.50
Adiaphora In Book v, Grotius rejects the necessity of observing a whole range of religious practices fiercely debated in his time, from dietary restrictions to holy days. In concluding these sections, he expounds a view of the Apostles and the early church as gentle and tolerant. As long as followers believed in Christ’s direct commands, ‘they easily suffered them to follow what course of life they pleased in matters of indifferency’ (rebus mediis),51 and imposed no religious require- ments whatever on strangers.
49 ‘Qui docent, “Foedus illud novum gratiæ, quod Deus Pater, per mortis Christi interventum cum hominibus pepigit, non in eo consistere, quod per fidem, quatenus meritum Christi apprehendit, coram Deo justificemur et salvemur; sed in hoc, quod Deus, abrogata per- fectæ obedientiæ legalis exactione, fidem ipsam et fidei obedientiam imperfectam pro perfecta legis obedientia reputet, et vitæ æternæ præmio gratiose dignam censeat.” Hi enim contradicunt Scripturæ, Justificantur gratis, ejus gratia, per redemptionem factam in Jesu Christo, quem proposuit Deus placamentum per fidem in sanguine ejus. Rom. iii. 24, 25. Et cum impio Socino, novam et peregrinam hominis coram Deo justificationem, contra totius Ecclesiæ consensum, inducunt.’ 50 1629 ed., v.175–6; 1689 tr., V.viii.141. 51 1689 tr., V.xii.148–9.
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The distinction between necessary and unnecessary doctrines is a well- known mainstay in Grotius’s irenicism, from his characterisation of Erasmus in the Parallelon to his late works.52 In De veritate, one load-bearing pillar of Grotius’s distinction is that Jesus observed all the laws of Moses until the time came to abrogate those that were not universal, but given only to the Jews.
Now that part of the Law, the necessity whereof was taken away by Christ, contained nothing that was honest in its own nature: but consisted of things that were indifferent in themselves and consequently not immu- table. For if those things had had in them any thing of themselves, why they should be done; then would God have prescribed them not to one, but to all People; and not after that Mankind had lived above the space of Two Thousand Years, but even from the beginning of all.53
Here we see Grotius crafting the components of his eventual conclusion, namely that most laws and rites are inessential. Even though many rituals were prescribed in the ot, they were given only to the Jews, and never applied to all mankind. Jesus initially observed them, but later replaced them with his own universal and tolerant laws and minimalist rites. Grotius’s final step is to show that there is little to no ceremonial content in the Christianity that replaced Judaism. Grotius systematically excludes all arguments for ritual Christianity, whether they derive from references to the ot, from positing Christians as ‘the new Jews,’ or from Jesus’ own observation of Mosaic rituals. Moreover, he does so while making it difficult for princes or ministers to persecute incorrect ritu- als, and as easy as possible for Jews to convert to Christianity. Idolatry toward rituals is a mistake, because rituals are inessential; yet the right attitude toward those who observe rituals is toleration.54 Grotius’s etiology of inessential rituals is ingenious. In De veritate, II.xiii he explains that pagan religions are cruel, as shown by ancient texts, but also by recent travel and exploration reports. Judaism contains nothing unseemly or dishonest, but it is loaded with neutral adiaphora to prevent a relapse into idolatry. Turks, among others, borrowed some of these inessentials. Christianity,
52 Heering, Grotius, p. 69. Somos, Secularisation, pp. 289–91, 322, 386. 53 1689 tr., V.vii.136. 1629 ed., v.167–70: ‘Pars vero illa legis, cujus necessitas à Christo sublata est, nihil continebat sui natura honestum: sed constabat ex rebus per se medijs, ac pro- inde non immutabilibus. Nam si eæ res per se aliquid haberent, cur faciendæ essent, omnibus populis non uni eas præscripsisset Deus, & ab initio statim…’ 54 1689 tr., V.xii.148–9.
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Distinctive Christian Truths
Grotius frequently invokes the testimony of pagans and non-Christians as hos- tile witnesses. There are several ways in which this tends to damage his case for the truth of Christianity. The deployments of non-Christian witnesses and beliefs in support of Christianity in De veritate often question Christian tenets, reduce them to non-special status, or alienate non-Christian readers by high- lighting an incompatibility instead of anchoring the doctrine in reasonable common ground. Book IV concludes with a section entitled ‘Ostenditur præcipua Christianæ religionis probari à sapientibus paganorum: & si quid in ea est difficile creditu, paria apud Paganos reperiri.’55 The premises of this section are already prob- lematic. There are not many Christian authorities to support the first state- ment, namely that the wisest pagans approve of all Christian precepts. Grotius was extremely well versed in Christian apologetics. His choices in structuring and substantiating his arguments must be interpreted in the light of this fact. Among numerous examples, De veritate is profitably compared with Lactantius, Divinarum Institutionum, Book ii, and the apologetic tradition that runs through Vives, Mornay and Sebond, mentioned explicitly in the book’s opening address to Bignon.56 The opening proposition of this section, already arresting, is even more striking in this context.
But the Pagans have the less to object against Christian Religion: because all the parts thereof are of such honesty and integrity, that they convince
55 1629 ed., IV.154–5; 1689 tr., IV.xii.124–5. 56 Heering suggests that Sebond is a guise for Socinus. Heering, Grotius, p. 94.
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Mens minds by their own light. In so much that there have not been wanting Men among the Pagans also, who have here and there said every one of those things, which our Religion hath in a body all together.57
A list of cardinal Christian tenets follows. Later editions give references to the pagans who prefigured the Christian doctrines on Grotius’s list, from the insig- nificance of rituals to the undesirability of swearing.58 The notion that every single Christian truth can be found among the pagans is neither a compelling argument to convince pagans to convert (if anything, it may have the opposite effect), nor logically necessary to Grotius’s scheme. The two proofs he names as primary, namely miracles and rewards, can and in fact are demonstrated in De veritate without deriving their validity from mankind’s collective religious experience. This section in Book IV remains a puzzling choice, unless one places De veritate squarely in the context of secularisation.59
The Trinity The next sub-section of IV.xii ostensibly aims to convert pagans by showing that the outlandish, creditu difficile things in Christianity are matched by simi- larly hard-to-believe doctrines of wise pagans. The first such item is the immor- tality of the soul (discussed separately below), followed by the Trinity, the possibility of combining human and divine nature, and finally the cross. Grotius’s inclusion of the Trinity among the Christian doctrines approved by the wisest pagans is not an obviously winning defense.
Thus Plato, as he learned from the Chaldeans, distinguished the Divine nature into the Father; and the mind of the Father; (which he calls also the branch of God, the Maker of the World) and the Soul or Spirit, which keeps together and preserveth all things.60
This comes as a seemingly secondary point in his attribution of the immor tality of the soul to pagan philosophy; but not even those Christian apologists
57 1689 tr., IV.xii.124. 1629 ed., IV.154–5: ‘Et verò minus pagani habent, quo Christianam reli- gionem oppugnent, quod ejus partes singulæ tantæ sunt honestatis, utsuapte luce ani- mos quasi cõvincant, ita ut inter paganos quoque non defuerint, qui dixerint singula, quæ nostra religio habet universa…’ 58 E.g. notes 1–12 on pp. 289–96 of the 1669 Amsterdam edition. 59 Somos, Secularisation. 60 1689 tr., IV.xii.125. 1629 ed., IV.155–6: ‘Sic Plato à Chaldæis edoctus divinam naturam distin- guit in patrem, mentem paternam, quam & rationem & Dei germen vocat, Mundi opifi- cem, & Animam sive Spiritum quo cuncta contineantur.’
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Jesus Christ Grotius’s intention in writing De veritate has been the subject of considerable debate. Is it a conciliatory gesture toward orthodox Calvinism or a confession of crypto-Socinianism? Is it addressed primarily to Christians, in order to foster unity, or should the reader take seriously Grotius’s assertion that his way of reclassifying and verifying Christian doctrine can help convert non-Christians to the true faith? Is there a difference between the seriousness, urgency, and expectation of success in his addresses to Jews, Muslims, pagans and Christians?
61 Or if Ficino does this, I have not found it. Grotius also asserts that Kabbalists have the same view of Trinity: 1629 ed., v.208; 1689 tr., V.xxi.165. 62 Augustine, On the City of God, x. 63 The significance of the cross was a much-debated issue. To cite one example, Robert Parker (1569–1614) had to flee after publishing A scholasticall Discourse against symbolizing with Antichrist in ceremonies, especially in the Signe of the Crosse in 1607, in which he strongly objects to the symbol. He became minister to the separatists in Holland. 64 E.g. Heering, Grotius, pp. 209–12. Nellen, ‘Minimal,’ p. 40.
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Without claiming to settle these debates, the language and organisation of De veritate suggests that Grotius was serious about addressing the Jews. However, in the course of crafting and compiling various reasons why they should accept Jesus as the Messiah, Grotius created a Jesus that a broad range of Christians would have found hard to recognise as their own. De veritate, II.vi contains several disingenuous or suspect points. Grotius argues that Jesus must have worked real miracles, inexplicable by nature or the devil’s assistance, because if that were not the case, these miracles would have been questioned by Christianity’s enemies. The appeal to an apophatically universal consent is already suspicious; but the real problem is that De veritate details numerous criticisms against Christianity on exactly this score. V.ii, for instance, counters those Jews who attribute Jesus’ miracles to the devil’s help – the precise charge that has not, according to II.vi, ever been made.65 Grotius asserts that all accusations against Jesus for being non-Jewish, or transgressing Mosaic laws, are false. Jesus observed all Jewish laws and rituals before his resurrection.66 Nor does the spate of accusations against him mean that Jesus was not an observant and orthodox Jew. Micah, Elijah and Jeremiah were similarly accused, and later justified.67 Not even his claim to be the Messiah was unprecedented.68
Son of God, Son of Man Grotius points out that the doctrine that Jesus was the son of God is not origi- nal to Christianity, either. Plato had earlier, and Mohammed later, made the same point about someone.69 Julian attributed a dual, divine and human, nature to Aesclepius.70
Death, Resurrection, and Ascension Many contemporary Christians and thinkers, including Hobbes, insisted that the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection must be central to the truth and appeal of Christianity. As explained elsewhere, for instance in the section on miracles above, Grotius himself put considerable stock in this doctrine. The argument of II.vii, namely that Christ’s resurrection cannot be refuted on grounds of impossibility because reports of resurrection from Plato, Heraclides, Herodotus
65 See Section IV.ii above. 66 1629 ed., v.166; 1689 tr., V.vii.135. 67 1629 ed., v.206; 1689 tr., V.xx.164. 68 1629 ed., v.194; 1689 tr., V.xvii.156. 69 1629 ed., VI.226; 1689 tr., VI.ix.179–80. 70 1629 ed., IV.156; 1689 tr., iv.125.
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71 Repeated in II.viii, and II.xii. 72 1627 ed., 135–6. 73 1627 ed., 160–1. Also see 1627 ed., 175, ‘Melius antiqui Hebræorum magistri fatebantur hæc de Messia dici…,’ and 178, ‘Addendum hic,…’ 74 1627 ed., 137–8; 1689 tr., 131. 75 1734 ed., V.iv.227–8.
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Free Will Grotius’s strong version of free will may be the only unproblematic and unquestioned Christian doctrine in De veritate.78 Man is born with an intrinsic sense of free will. It is the reason why astrology is wrong, and God is not respon- sible for evil.
I do not here speak of such effects as follow from a natural necessity of causes, but of those that proceed from the will of Man, which of it self hath such liberty and freedom, that no necessity or violence can be impressed upon it from without. For if the consent of the will did neces- sarily follow any outward impression, then the power in our Soul, which we may perceive it hath to consult, deliberate and chuse, would be given in vain. Also the equity of all Laws, of all rewards and punishments would be taken away, seeing there can be neither fault nor merit in that which is altogether necessary and inevitable.79
76 On Scaliger’s and his students’ knowledge and use of the Pugio, including in De veritate, see Somos, Secularisation, pp. 325–7. The Houghton copy of Brenz’s book claims to be printed in Augsburg, not Nuremberg, as most bibliographical sources have it. 77 See for instance Somos, Secularisation, pp. 413–4 for the same technique in De iure praedae. 78 1689 tr., IV.xi.122. 79 1689 tr., IV.xi.122. See also the next paragraph. In 1629 ed., 152: ‘Non de illis loquor effecti- bus, qui ex naturali necessitate causarum sequuntur, sed de his, qui ab humana proce- dunt voluntate…’
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While natural forces can affect will-formation, the Christian and contempla- tive man can learn to dissociate from nature, and achieve self-mastery. Grotius’s linking of Christianity and Stoicism is well discussed in recent literature.80 The point to note here is that the Christian free will doctrine Grotius offers is developed legally and philosophically, rather than on specifically Christian foundations. It needs little Christianity to work.
Immortality and Last Judgment As mentioned above, Grotius’s logical argument for the immortality of the soul and the last judgment is fallacious. Moreover, in De veritate, I.xii he attributes the same two beliefs to several pagan groups. Just as he courted controversy by ascribing the notion of the Trinity to Plato, Grotius does the same with the immortality of the soul (I.xxiv).
Doctrinal Omissions The absence of the Trinity from the list of core doctrines Grotius set out to prove provoked fierce criticism at least until the nineteenth century.81 Although Grotius refers to the idea of a Prime Mover briefly (in I.xxii), he does not include it among the proofs of God’s existence at the beginning of De veritate. When he elaborates in II.vii that God would not allow innocent men to suf- fer or be misled, Grotius is effectively denying tenets that hinge on the notion of trials and tribulations. This notion is well supported in the nt, and most Christian denominations subscribed to a variety. Grotius’s treatment of evil spirits as real and effective (e.g. in II.vi), however, precludes the doctrine that they are all the products of ignorance, idolatry, or trials and tribulations. This is also the place to note the peculiarity of De veritate, II.xvii, where Grotius refutes Christianity’s critics who emphasise the disagreements and controversies among Christian factions. A diversity of opinion about matters of secondary importance is natural, and inevitably appears in all areas of human knowledge; but certain basic principles are evident and indisputable without losing credibility. Grotius ends his passionate plea to accept these principles, attested by all Christians, the same way everyone admits the white- ness of snow:
80 See e.g. Grotius and the Stoa, ed. by Hans Blom and Laurens Winkel, Grotiana n.s. 22/23 (2001–2002), reissued (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2004). 81 For some, see the secondary literature cited in the section on the Trinity, above. Similar cases of Grotius’s deliberate and politically strategic omissions of specific doctrines from biblical exegeses in De iure praedae are given in Somos, Secularisation, pp. 416–22.
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For in the opinion of any indifferent Judge, that must needs be reputed the true doctrine of Christ, which so many have successively acknowl- edged and professed; like as we are perswaded that was the doctrine of Socrates which we read in Plato and Xenophon; as also that of Zeno the Philosopher, which we find held by the Stoicks.82
As mentioned before, there were no key doctrines left unquestioned in this book. De veritate and other works of Christian minimalism explicitly set out to find the sustainable core, and generate consensus around it. Note, however, that even if De veritate did not fail to postulate such a doctrinal core of Christianity, Grotius’s equation of the epistemic reliability that could be attrib- uted to such a minimalist core by an equitable judge with the reliability that the same judge would attribute to Socrates or Zeno, based on their followers’ evidence, would still debase the claim of Christianity to special truth.
Proofs from Providential History
The Bible’s Textual Integrity Grotius opens De veritate, Book III with the statement that the eponymous authors of biblical books did in fact write them, and this plain and uncompli- cated fact is proved by the absence of any controversy by Christians, Jews, or pagans on this matter.83 This was one of the, if not the, most disputed issues in the history of biblical exegesis, in which the seventeenth century was not the calmest. It is difficult to avoid the impression that Grotius’s unqualified over- simplification and mis-statement are intentional. In fact, Grotius later modi- fies this statement by adding that some texts, including Revelation, Hebrews, and the second epistle of Peter, have only been recently accepted; but they contain nothing that is not attested in other books. Elsewhere, for instance in Book v, he himself calls attention to the broad and contested range of interpre- tations in existence.84 The implausible overstatement regarding the Bible’s undisputed textual integrity is followed by a move, still in Book III, that has a didactic secularising effect whether or not one accepts the seriousness of this opening statement.
82 1675 ed., II.xvii.180: ‘Nam quod hi omnes ut Christi dogma agnoscunt, id omnino pro tali habendum est ab æquo rerum judice: sicut Platoni, Xenophonti, aliisque Socratis, Stoïcorum scholæ de his quæ Zeno tradidit.’ 83 1629 ed., iii.101–3. 84 1629 ed. III.197; 1689 tr., V.xviii.157.
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Denying disagreement among the biblical books, Grotius states that they ‘do most manifestly and apparently agree about such things as concern any weighty point of doctrine or history,’85 and that such consent cannot be found outside Christianity. Small discrepancies do not undermine, but strengthen the case for the Bible’s veracity, because such discrepancies are natural and prove that there was no conspiracy among the authors. If readers unreasonably considered small discrepancies unacceptable, then all books, especially histo- ries, would have to be discarded. Polybius, Halicarnassus, Livy and Plutarch write true histories, even if they disagree on small details.86 Firstly, subjecting the Bible to the same sort of textual criticism as non- religious texts was still a highly controversial manoeuvre in the seventeenth century. It was common, for instance, to consider God as the author of the Bible, and the men reported in the Bible as various sections’ authors as hardly more than divinely inspired amanuenses. Discrepancies were often explained as mysteries, limitations of human language and understanding, figurative or allegorical expressions, prophecies still unfulfilled, and so forth. There was a range of more pious alternatives to attributing them to human errors akin to contradictions within and between historical texts. Secondly, the acknowl- edgement of even small discrepancies is not uncontroversial in De veritate’s historical context. Thirdly, Grotius sets the same standards for the Bible’s integ- rity as for histories.87 Fourthly, just a few pages later Grotius directly contra- dicts his statement that the same consent cannot be found outside Christianity, when he reformulates the same proofs of the nt’s veracity for the ot. According to Grotius, one proof of the ot’s textual integrity is that the dispersion of the Jews did not produce rival versions.88 The fifth thing worth noting here is the ingenious way in which Grotius removes the disputed parts of the Bible from Christianity’s core doctrines, and positions only the universally accepted parts left – if any – as really important.
85 1689 tr., III.xiii.97. 1629 ed., III.119: ‘quod in rebus, quæ aliquod dogmatis, aut historiæ momentum in se habent, manifestissima est ubique consensio…’ 86 1629 ed., III.120. 87 Somos, Secularisation, ch. ii and passim, on the historicisation of the Bible; and pp. 414–6 for the secularising effect of the same technique in De iure praedae. Another case in De veritate is the Sabbath, which Grotius fully historicises in order to refute its binding cere- monial character. 1689 tr., V.x.145–6. 88 1629 ed., 129–31. For related arguments by contemporaries see Somos, ‘Mare Clausum, Leviathan, and Oceana: Bible Criticism, Secularisation and Imperialism in Seventeenth- Century English Political and Legal Thought,’ in eds. C.L. Crouch and J. Stökl, In the Name of God: The Bible in the Colonial Discourse of Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 85–132, Section ii.
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Next, Grotius builds one of the most remarkable sections in De veritate to prove the Bible’s authenticity. The section is difficult to summarise ade- quately, but centers on the argument that the integrity of the biblical text is shown by its survival of various challenges, including the translation of the text into many languages, and the absence of an authority figure who could have imposed a text other than the one that truthfully reflected the reported events. The biblical doctrines concerning God are true, because the God described therein would not have allowed thousands of men, earnestly desiring salvation, to be misled into error.89 On the one hand, this is a blatant logical fallacy. On the other, Grotius gives actual counterexamples of such false beliefs in his accounts of paganism and Islam, both of them widespread belief systems at one time or another, despite the combination of God’s benevolence and these religions’ error.
The Spread of Christianity There are two perhaps unexpected ways in which Grotius uses the survival and spread of Christianity to prove its truth content. First, Christianity’s historical survival in the face of adversity is unparalleled evidence of its truth, according to Grotius, but only if one regards it as the perfection of the Jewish religion – which is older.90 Secondly, Grotius presents the spreading of Christianity as one of the miraculous signs of its truth.
… if God have any care of humane affairs, this doctrine cannot but be believed to be Divine. It was very agreeable to Divine Providence, to make that which was best, to be of the greatest and largest extent. […] And certainly there is no other Religion comparable hereunto for ample and large extent.91
Grotius’s conclusion to this section is that while Islam commands large territo- ries, all of its countries contain Christians as well; but the opposite is not true. Grotius also appeals to the spread of Christianity as proof that Jesus is really the Messiah foretold in Jewish prophecies, unlike others who made the same
89 1629 ed., III.127. 90 1629 ed., I.xiii. 91 1689 tr., II.xxi.71–2. 1629 ed., pp. 88–90: ‘non possit hoc dogma non divinum credi. Conveniebat divinæ providentiæ id efficere, ut, quod optimum esset, pateret quam latis- sime. (…) Quæ est religio, quæ cum tam lata possessione possit contendere?’ Note how Patrick’s translation turned the question into a statement. See also 1629 ed., p. 99; 1675 ed., II.xviii. pp. 183–4.
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Before Jesus his coming almost the whole World was over-spread with false Worships and Religions: which afterward by little and little began to vanish away, and not only single persons, but both People and Kings were converted unto the worship and service of one God.92
The self-subversion of Grotius’s argument for Christianity’s truth based on its territorial, demographic and political expansion, and on its conversion of states and individuals at the expense of other religions, is set up in perfect detail, as Grotius explains the mirroring set of the same metrics of success as signs of unholy aggression and false beliefs in Islam. A second reason why Grotius’s contrast between the spread of Christianity and the expansion of Islam is indicative of didactic secularisation is that the self-contradiction we find in his discussion of the former is mirrored in the lat- ter. As we saw, Grotius gives conflicting proofs of the truth of Christianity, as peaceful and simple until Constantine on the one hand, and increasingly cor- rupt and victorious afterwards, on the other; with both pacifism and its unri- valled later worldly expansion meant to prove its truth. Similarly, in De veritate, VI.vii. he describes Islam as a religion that is a mere accessory to war. Therefore its conquests condemn, not justify, its religious truth. Immediately, Grotius inverts the argument: Islam’s later defeats show the religion’s inconstancy. The passage is worth citing at length.
There is nothing that is liable to such uncertain alterations, nothing that may be common both to good and bad; which can be a certain note of true Religion: much less can their Arms, which are so unjust, that often- times they fall upon people, that do not any way molest or offend them, nor are known to them by any injury; in so much that all the pretence they have for their Arms, is only Religion; which is most irreligious. For there is no true worship of God, but what proceeds from a willing mind. And the will is to be wrought upon by good instruction and gentle perswasion, but not by threats or violence. He that is compelled to believe, doth not believe at all, but plays the Hypocrite, and feigns him- self to believe, that he may escape and avoid some danger or punishment. And he that by threats or sense of punishment, will force another Man’s assent, shews by that very proceeding, that he distrusts his arguments.
92 1689 tr., V.xvii.155–7. The passage cited is on pp. 156–7.
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Again, they themselves destroy this very pretence of Religion; in that they suffer any people that live under their Dominion, to use what Religion they please: yea, and sometimes they will openly acknowledge, that Christians may be saved by their own Law.93
It is hard not to hear Grotius’s criticism of Counter-Remonstrants, and a sense of his own predicament, in this passage. (Moreover, the concluding sentence suggests that even these oppressive Muslims have a degree of tolerance and understanding.) It is also one more statement that warrants paying attention to the immediate historical and personal context of De veritate’s composition. The simple facts of the persecution of Remonstrants and Grotius’s imprison- ment suggest that in addition to Grotius’s genuine point about Islam, this pas- sage is also a thinly veiled attack on the Gomarists.94
The early Church and the Bible Placing the New Testament in a historicising context, Grotius showed that the apostles believed that the Second Coming was imminent.95 Heering explains a contemporary inference.
Sarrau wondered if this did not strip the Scriptures of all their authority; for if the apostles had really believed this they would have been the vic- tims of a delusion, and would immediately lose all their authority.96
One can perhaps distinguish three reasons for this instant loss of authority. One is that the Apostles were mistaken. In the rest of this paragraph in II.vii, Grotius ties the correctness, and evidential value, of the apostles’ belief closely
93 1689 tr., VI.vii.177–8. 1627 ed., VI.193–4. 94 Klein points to the same contradictions in the text, and reads them as Grotius’s reproach of Christianity in general for falling behind Islam in tolerance. I agree that there are self-con- tradictions, but I think they hide narrower criticisms of Counter-Remonstrants. Neither am I convinced by Klein that Grotius seriously posited Islam as a lesson in toleration for Christians. Klein, ‘Hugo Grotius’s Position,’ at pp. 157–8. Conversely, when Klein intrigu- ingly conjectures that Grotius deliberately identified and foregrounded Socinian-Muslim commonalities and doctrinal approximations, I see Grotius use these commonalities to subvert his prima facie argument for the reasonableness of Christianity not in order to move closer to Socinianism, but in pursuit of his irenic, ecumenist, and didactic objective. 95 E.g. 1629 ed., II.vii. On the pervasive secularising effect of his historicisation of the OT see Dmitri Levitin, ‘From Sacred History to the History of Religion: Paganism, Judaism, and Christianity in European Historiography from Reformation to “Enlightenment”,’ The Historical Journal 55:4 (2012), 1117–60, at p. 1129. 96 Heering, Grotius, p. 215, with references and summary of their 1640–1 exchange.
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Moreover all Religions, and Christianity more than any other, forbids lying in bearing false witness, especially in divine things.97
In the context, it is hard to resist the inference that either the apostles com- pletely misunderstood Jesus, or Jesus deceived them about the imminence of his return. Neither tine on this Morton’s fork bodes well for the truth of Christianity.
Aspects of Reception
Grotius gave diverse accounts of the ambition of De veritate. His brother Willem asked Gerard Vossius in a letter of 14 June, 1619 to send Grotius books to support his writing project against atheists, Jews, heathens and Muslims, as well as the internal enemies of the church. In a 15 December, 1619 letter to Vossius, Grotius mentioned unbelievers and Jews as the target audience of his intended short book.98 When Willem predicted that Grotius will be severely censured for not proving the Trinity or the divinity of Christ, Grotius replied on 12 April, 1620 that his intended audience is not Christians, but impii, ethnici, iudaei, mahometistae.99 The Preface reiterates these target audiences, and adds Dutch seafarers in particular. De veritate, Grotius explains, is meant to help the Dutch, who excel other nations in navigation, spread Christianity, and also resist the temptations of converting to paganism, Islam, or Judaism. Both a close reading and the history of its reception show that De veritate, while not a secular or atheistic text, had a profoundly secularising impact. Its ostensible minimalism and its self-contradictions are both reasons for De veritate’s enormous eighteenth-century success.100 Blom points out Grotius’s
97 1689 tr., II.vii.48. 98 References in Heering, Grotius, p. 9. 99 Cited in Heering, Grotius, p. 73. Note that my concern here is Grotius’s original intention, not the later missionary uses of his work. 100 Champion, ‘”Socinianism.”’
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Conclusion: Christianity According to De Veritate
Mirum autem non est, umbras destinati operis auferri opere impleto. Grotius, Sensus librorum sex, quos pro veritate Religionis Christianæ (1627), 158
Summary of Findings Grotius ostensibly presented certain tenets as the minimalist core of Christianity that commanded universal consensus. He did not positively spec- ify which tenets these were.103 Elsewhere he acknowledged that Christian sects were numerous and disagreed viciously;104 and that such a consensus was impossible to begin with.105 Moreover, Christians have disputed every doc- trine from the start.106 Each doctrine that Grotius implied was necessary and universal was challenged in his lifetime, together with his selection,107 and his method.108 Even compared to other secularising essays in irenicism and minimalism, De veritate stands out as unusual. The fact that contemporary
101 Hans Blom, ‘Grotius and Socinianism,’ in: Socinianism and Arminianism, ed. Mulsow and Rohls 121–47, at pp. 124–5. 102 Heering, Grotius, pp. 200–2. 103 Heering, Grotius, p. 70. 104 1629 ed., 111–2. 105 Nellen, ‘Minimal,’ an excellent point on p. 30. 106 1629 ed., VI.213–5; 1689 tr., VI.170. 107 Heering, Grotius, p. 200. 108 Heering, Grotius, pp. 208–9: Rivet thought that Grotius gave too general an account of God. See Heering, Grotius, p. 210, for Shoockius’s criticism.
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109 Major criticisms from Episcopius, Vossius, Schoockius, and Sarrau are referred to above. Maresius, Rivet, and others in Heering, Grotius, chapter 7. On competing rewritings and adaptations see e.g. Heering, Grotius, pp. 236–8. Idem, p. 73: Grotius is unique among Christian apologists in not proving the truth of Christian doctrines. 110 Evrigenis, Images is an excellent study of a comparable, though more sophisticated, rhe- torical strategy in Hobbes’s Leviathan. 111 Despite flaws, Hiram Haydn’s thesis in The Counter-Renaissance (New York, 1950) that a fideism skeptical of humanism and reason was the main intellectual movement that nour- ished both the Reformation and the scientific revolution, remains valuable. In The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle (rev. ed., Oxford: OUP, 2003), Richard Popkin gives a compatible account of fideist skepticism, though with different emphases.
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Thesis 1: Secularising Legalism As mentioned, Grotius was keenly conscious of the need to match style to con- tent. The interesting thing is that while his source is Aristotle, he also attributes this rhetorical insight to Moses.112 Several arguments and compositional fea- tures have been noticed by other scholars, and in this paper, that bring out the striking fact that De veritate follows the genre characteristics of a legal treatise. On the one hand, this is readily understandable, given Grotius’s training, and his trust in legal methods of presenting and evaluating evidence, and positing and balancing arguments, in front of De veritate’s intended broad and diverse audience. Moreover, to some extent he was working on De veritate and De iure belli ac pacis in parallel.113 On the other hand, the consequent reductionism, use of analogies, balancing claims to come to a reasonable verdict rather than accommodating claims that seem contrary to reason, the prioritisation of authorities, the minimalisation of potentially conflicting definitions,114 and other legalistic features of De veritate, are ill-suited to proving the truth of any religion. The rhetorical and argumentative techniques that are available in a theological or mystical treatise to, for instance, reconcile reasonable with rev- elation-based doctrines, are unavailable in a legal treatise. The numerous ways in which Grotius’s reliance on the device of testimonies subverts his claim to prove the truth of Christianity comprise one such case; the reluctance to offer a treatment of the Trinity, despite friends’ and enemies’ warnings, may be another. Heering is among those who rightly draw attention to the peculiarity of De veritate within the apologetic genre as primarily a legal treatise, in method, source selection, argumentation, and arrangement.115 This is a crucial point, and one can expand it by noting Grotius’s examination of witnesses’ potential conflicts of interest, his systematic invocation of hostile witnesses,116 as well as the assumption that the agreement of pagans, Jews, and Muslims on aspects of Christianity constitute sufficient proof. This assumption holds up in foren- sic reasoning and not otherwise, especially when the witnesses are also sys- tematically shown to be unreliable in general and in the particulars of their
Richard Tuck convincingly argues in Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651 (Cambridge: CUP, 1993) that much of Grotius’s impact comes from his solutions to the skeptical chal- lenge in politics and law. The function of skepticism in De veritate is a fascinating subject, but beyond this paper’s scope. 112 1629 ed., I.xiv. Also see 1689 tr., I.xv.25–6. 113 Heering, Grotius, p. 36. 114 See Heering, Grotius, p. 71, references to relevant passages in other Grotius works. 115 Heering, Grotius, pp. 62, 71, 242, passim. 116 II.13.48, II.16, II.22.70–1, for Messiah.
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Moreover, vain is that perswasion which they conceive of god, that he is good, and therefore will not punish this offence; because they think so to do, were contrary to his goodness. For mercy or clemency, that it may be just, hath its bounds and limits: and where wickedness abounds beyond measure, there justice doth as it were necessarily require the infliction of punishment.119 exemplify other legalisms, deployed to make legal sense of Christian doctrines like God’s justice, even if they come at the cost of reasoning more like a lawyer than a
117 1629 ed., v.167–8, 171. 118 1689 tr. V.x.145–6. 1629 ed., p. 182: ‘Iam vero, quæ in memoriam exitus ab Ægypto instituta sunt, non esse talia, ut nunquam cessare debeant, supra jam ostendimus ex promisso majorum multo beneficiorum.’ Outward circumcision superseded: V.xi. 119 1689 tr., IV.iii.111. 1629 ed., IV.138: ‘Stulta autem est persuasio, qua fingunt, Deum bonum id non vindicaturum, quia id à bonitate alienum esset. Nam clementia, ut justa sit, suos habet limites, & ubi scelera modum excedunt, pœnam justitia ex se quasi necessario producit.’
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Christian. Another instance is Grotius’s defense of free will, following his refuta- tion of astronomy. And as we saw above, it is the primarily legal, not the Christian, definition of intention that underpins the right understanding of free will. The legal framework sharpens our focus on the question: what is the signifi- cance of all these self-contradictions? What is the reason for this method? One obvious, but ultimately unconvincing, reason is that the original version was written while Grotius was in custody. Although this is certainly impor- tant, it is an insufficient explanation of the particular features described here. Moreover, one should not be quick to reduce the text to the most simplistic reconstruction of its context, especially given the history of later editions, and Grotius’s opportunities to make emendations. In the preface to Bignon, Grotius contrasts his corporal captivity with his mental freedom to use Jewish and Christian sources uti voluisse meo qualicunque judicio, & animo dare, negatam, cum id scriberem, corpori libertatem.120 A more careful explanation is needed.
Thesis 2: Didactic Secularisation An intriguing alternative explanation for the numerous, systematic, and strate- gic self-contradictions in De veritate is Jane Newman’s suggestion that Grotius did not seek to establish a new orthodoxy, or a minimalist consensus, on rea- son, but on the authority of the early church, and ‘local receptions of Scripture in various countries and tongues.’ His intention was to re-establish what Newman calls ‘unity-in-diversity’ as Christianity’s proper foundation.121 One could add to her supporting citations Grotius’s argument that even though localised natural causes can affect will-formation, Christianity continued for 16 centuries under different constellations.122 One reason to not be satisfied with this explanation is that even later, rewrit- ten and ‘mature’ versions of De veritate carry the marks of their origin as a didactic poem. The legalistic genre was superimposed without obliterating this foundation. There is no tension between the legalistic and the didactic framework; we saw, for instance, that Grotius thought that Moses composed in the same way. So did God: ot laws were, Grotius points out often, a didactic device.123 Nonetheless, the didactic structure built into De veritate can be divorced and retraced independently from the work’s legalistic form.
120 De veritate, 2. 121 J.O. Newman, “’Race,’ Religion, and the Law: Rhetorics of Sameness and Difference in the Work of Hugo Grotius,” in: Rhetoric and Law in the Early Modern Period, ed. by Victoria Kahn and Lorna Hutson (Yale: Yale up, 2001), pp. 285–31, at p. 311 fn46. 122 1689 tr., IV.xi.123–4. 123 E.g. 1689 tr., V.vi.134–5.
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Grotius’s appeal to all men’s reason is the first step of his strategy. This allows him to claim to build on common ground, as well as to fiercely criticise reli- gious doctrines in paganism, Islam, Judaism, and in Christianity, that do not fit the minimalist thrust of his argument, namely the reduction of strife-causing doctrinal commitments. On this common ground, however, following his call for a shared epistemic space, he proceeds to perform a series of moves that demolish the power of human reason to prove Christianity. Designating mira- cles as one hallmark of a true religion, consistently placing tremendous bur- dens of proof on them, and consistently subverting the credibility of biblical miracles, comprise one of these moves.124 Others are detailed above. Grotius also consistently and systematically undermines his own rational arguments for the truth of Christianity, and does so with logical fallacies that were recognisable to any of his educated readers who were familiar with Aristotle (and were in fact pointed out by several of them). The various state- ments that the core of Christianity commands perfect consensus, and its spread proves its truth, beg the question and raison d’être of the whole De veri- tate, as it is laid out in its Introduction and Conclusion. Grotius’s presentation of the evidence, for instance in II.vi. that Jesus’ miracles were not assisted by the devil, often includes a petitio principii. One of Grotius’s arguments for the Bible’s textual integrity is another case of this logical error, laid out in a straight- forward, easy-to-recognise manner.125 The paradox of Peter’s credibility, based chiefly on the truth of his self-presentation as a liar, is discussed in Section II.5 above. The reasoning in I.xx regarding the soul surviving the body is a textbook case of circulus in probando, as is the argument in Book III that prophetical passages in the Bible, though obscure at the time of writing, are justified by later events that prove those passages to have been inspired by divine revela- tion.126 We saw several cases of faulty generalisation (often the specific form a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter) or ignoratio elenchi, for example
124 Contrast, for instance, Isaac La Peyrére (1596–1676), who in his 1655 Prae-Adamitae, IV.iv begins from the same principles to explain and interpret miracles, but ends with the opposite conclusion: ‘Such men as these think all things that people believe wil not believe Religion & Divinity, & miracles with them have the greater repute of sanctity, the more incredible they are; and which is a strange thing, the more they are past belief, the more they believe them: I Ingenuously confesse, I doe not give in my name amongst those enormous upholders of miracles, who put all reason out of square. I am reasonable, and any thing that is belonging to reason I pretend an interest in it.’ Men before Adam (1656), IV.v.234. On IV.xiv.276–81, La Peyrére recounts that he showed Grotius an early manu- script version of his book. 125 Discussed in detail above. 1629 ed., III.127. 126 1629 ed., III.110–1.
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127 Aristotle’s Prior Analytics and Organon are among probable sources of this list Jacopo Zabarella (1533–89), who taught Arminius at Padua, builds on Aristotle an excellent check list of such logical fallacies in his Opera Logica. 128 Heering, Grotius, pp. 12–14! 129 Champion’s formulation of the broader importance of this move is spot on: “’Socinianism,’” pp. 126–7. I suggest that the ‘radical complexion’ and political message that De veritate assumed in the eighteenth century, as Champion explains, also existed in the United Provinces after the Synod of Dordt. Although De veritate served different functions in eighteenth-century political contexts, it was hardly less subversive in its own. Seeing De veritate merely as a milder forerunner of Enlightenment manoeuvres, including the polit- ical disempowerment of clergy and the declaration of the ‘principle of self-determination of belief’ (Champion, p. 136), cannot account either for the various ways in which De veri- tate differed from the apologetic-irenic genre of Vives, Mornay and others, to which it claimed to belong; nor for its ostensible self-contradictions and glaring errors. The didac- tic secularising interpretation can, without affecting the interpretation of De veritate’s eighteenth-century uses, or even clarifying and enhancing them. 130 Even the strong version of this claim of course predates Protestantism, e.g. in the popular and frequently cited fides non habet meritum cui humana ratio prebet experimentum. Gregory, Hom. in Ev. II.26.1, in pl 76, 1197C. 131 1689 tr. VI.xi.184–5.
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132 An attempt to explicitly map out this strategy can be found in Matthew Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind (publ. 1677, from notes made throughout his life), including I.ii.63, III.i.246, III.v.165–7 and III.vi.283. 133 Somos, Secularisation. 134 Grotius, Rivetiani Apologetici… in: Opera Theologica (Basel, 1732), IV.679–745, at 701, b32– 36. Cited on Heering, Grotius, p. 72. This is perfectly in keeping with Nellen, ‘Minimalism,’ p. 26: ‘Grotius was an advocate and homo rhetoricus whose eclecticism encouraged him to make points rather than hold views’. For a parallel case of these two implications, applied to Hobbes, see Evrigenis, Images.
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